Das soziale Erbe : Eine soziologische Fallstudie über drei Generationen einer Familie

Abstract

Within an exemplary case of one familiy this study investigates how cultural values and biographical orientations are transmitted from one generation to another. Therefore the phenomenon of social heritage is the main topic of this research: Social inheritance implies the transmission, the adoption and the transformation of non-material goods in the family process. In which Ways are women and men influenced in developing their individual biographies by cultural meanings, orientations and values passed on in the family?

The study presents the processes of passing on family traditions in the greater context of historical and social change in this century. It is this frame of conditions which convert social inheritances into a complex phenomenon with ambivalent and contradictional character. By embedding the analysis of the single case in the historical reality of social change the theoretical argument of the study gets in touch with the issue of social modernization which ist broadly discussed in the social sciences. It is one argument in this discussion, if we look at the concept of "Individualisierung" (U. Beek) and the concept o post-traditional ism (A. Giddens), that the dynamics of change diminishes the social meaning of family origin and traditional environment. The research on a single case, which is here presented, tries to get a look on the inner side of the social reality which ist usually described only in reference to macrosociological concepts and wants to proof the validity of these concepts from the perspective in detail.

The case study reaches two main conclusions:

In the first place we can say that social movements foster a reflexive transformation process by which a young generation changes traditions inherited by their parents along their own Conditions of living and biographical aspirations. The middle generation of the family, which is the case in this study, is born around 1948 and is engaged within the social movements of 1968. Out of this historical experience this generation is acting in a sense of critical re-interpretation of family tradition and at the same time is keeping a sense of historicity in this process. It does not feel as a victim of social change but as its actor.

In the second place we can say that the significance of family traditions increases in the same way as the cultural systems of meaning and traditions become more pluralistic. This thesis comprehends the type of social inheritance which gets shape within the young generation of the family, born around 1972. For this generation the specific life models of the parents gain biographical importance because they function as a bridge of mediation to cultural worlds of meaning which have become more and more reflexive and confusing. This generation has to stand on its own in its attempts to transform the social inheritance and it lives in a feeling of being driven by the power of social change.

There ist also a methodological purpose connected with this study. New impulses should be given to the case study as a specific design of interpretative research. To do this different concepts, which are accepted and proved in other disciplines of social sciences, are bound together with empirical thought in sociology: the concept of thick description transfered from cultural anthropology and the concept of "szenisches Verstehen " transfered from psychoanalysis. This methodological argumentations are outlined in detail in specific sections before the discussion turns to the phenomenon of social heritage under the conditions of social change.